Dare Me to Live

Chapter 20 (Part two)

Tyler offered to let me crash again once I explained the phone call. I readily accepted even though I knew Chris wasn't a problem I could avoid forever. But one more night wouldn't hurt.

We rejoined the party and I enthusiastically situated myself in the middle of it, determined to hang on to this flare of happiness as long as possible. I danced, played beer pong, cremated more people in NHL and let laughter and human presence flood my senses, tinged by only a touch of alcohol.

It was well past midnight when Tyler closed the door on the last stragglers. Zeke and his girlfriend had already disappeared into the bedroom down the hall. I helped Tyler clean up the worst of the mess in the kitchen, leaving the living room for a hungover Zeke to attend to in the morning.

When I walked into Tyler's room after changing in the bathroom, it was to find him turning down the bed. He looked up at my entrance and I didn't miss the way his gaze skimmed my leggings and tank top. There was a pillow and blanket tucked under his arm. Seeing them, I was momentarily confused.

He had obviously not wanted to invite himself to sleep in the bed with me, but it wasn't like we hadn't shared a bed before. I wondered sadly if he had only stayed that night in my room because he felt worse leaving. I realized I still didn't know what we were or where this was going. But before I could dig up the courage to ask, he spoke up.

"I was just grabbing a few things," he said, indicating the objects under his arm. "I hope you sleep well," he added with a smile.

He started moving past me and as he put his hand on the door I heard myself saying, "Wait."

I turned to face him, my eyes flicking over the different angles of his face, down the lines of his body just visible beneath his t-shirt and sweatpants. "Will you stay?" I asked.

I took a step closer to him, my bare feet making a shhh noise on the carpet.  I placed my hands lightly on his sides, like this was a slow dance and I was taking the lead. I leaned up on my toes, a ballerina en pointe, and pressed my lips to his. Electricity, like that of sporadic power surge, crackled up my spine. It zipped down my arms and through my fingers, tingling in my nerves.

I felt him through his lips. I could taste his metallic past, bogged down with all the stones and secrets and what-ifs; his present, a desire for a normal life as potent and heady as cinnamon; and the sharp bite of his future with all that he wanted to become and all that he didn't.

I realized in that kiss that the past holds just as many what-ifs as the future.

And it was the what-ifs that connected us now at each point of contact, our hands on each other's waists, our lips molding together, the tips of our noses brushing. Connections as thin and fine as a spider's web, just as breakable and just as strong.

The blanket and pillow had slipped from the crook of his elbow, forgotten.

Tyler pulled back to look at me. There was a question in his stormy eyes, but it was being overpowered with lightning flashes of desire.

He bent his head to kiss me once again, more insistently this time. My body responded as my stomach dropped away and my heart seemed to be imprinting its shape into my chest. I dug my fingers into his shirt, pulling him closer. There was a sharp intake of breath as his teeth grazed my lower lip but I couldn't tell if it was him or me.

The backs of my legs bumped into the bed frame. I moved my fingers down under the hem of his shirt and pulled it up, exposing his stomach, chest, shoulders until it was over his head and discarded on the floor. I traced the taught lines of his abdomen up to the hollow of his neck. Beneath my fingers, his pulse raced my own. I followed the curves of his collarbones down his arms where the faint cords of tendons stood out, over the black outline of the butterfly in the crook of his left elbow to his rough palms. The right one had a raised line where his white scar split his hand neatly in half.